Teachers Pay Teachers (or TPT) strives to help educators by providing a space to buy and sell original educational resources. Whether across the city, state, country, continent or world, we can recognize there is something special about using resources created by teachers who understand what works in a classroom.  You, too, have this special something and can help others by setting up a store.

It is pretty easy to get a store started. We all create resources to help ignite learning in our own classrooms. Picking out the perfect name for your store and reviewing copyright laws are amongst the harder aspects of getting it up and running. To get your products to others, much like in the 1999 movie Office Space suggested, it’s the atmosphere and attitude that helps to catch their attention. Your store can provide a space to truly express yourself and “you do want to express yourself, don’t ya?”

Canva is a wonderful tool to efficiently and effectively add just the flair you need! As you have probably seen in the recent blog post series, Canva is a 100% free online tool that you can use to design all sorts of graphics. It is a cloud-based, online website that can be used on any device and from anywhere. It saves all of your work online so you can open up your designs any time and any place.  Canva works for any device that you have – Chromebooks, laptops, tablets and they even have an app! Canva Pro is also available to educators for FREE! This allows you access to:

There are 5 ways that the Teachers Pay Teachers website allows you to personalize your store beyond the basic store setup. All of these can be created on the Canva website!

The profile photo appears at the top of your TPT store. It is an image that represents you and what your store is all about. It is a perfect opportunity to create a logo as a visual representation. Within Canva, you can begin to design using the logo template. Designing in this template will provide the perfect size  logo, 500 x 500 pixels, to fit into the profile photo spot. As you are designing remember—the logo you create will eventually be cropped into a circle on the Teachers Pay Teachers website! 

Once you have finished your logo design using the tools available in Canva, you can change your profile photo in your store by going to your seller dashboard. 

Once you are on the dashboard, you want to “edit profile” which you can find right next to the name of your store.

To avoid greeting your customers with the dreaded box that says “yet to add a quote”, you can welcome them by designing a quote banner. This appears to the right of the fabulous logo you have created and just under your store name. It is a great opportunity to highlight important features of your store, products you have just added or would like to draw attention to or just express your gratitude for the visit.  Within Canva, you can create the perfect size banner by using the custom size feature. Your quote banner should be 452 x 157 pixels.  

You can add your creation to your TPT store in your profile, just like you did for your logo. (Dashboard—>Edit profile). You will see the option to add a text quote or a link/image. The link/image option is what you need to choose in order to upload the .png file from Canva.

The Store Page Leaderboard is another space you can use to make your store visually appealing to visitors. It will be located at the top of your product listings. It can provide another space to highlight your store name, the purpose for creating your store or to add a seasonal design element. Canva has a template that works perfect for creating this part of your store called Leaderboard Ad. It is 160 x 200 pixels. 

To upload your layout from Canva to Teachers Pay Teachers, you will once again enter the dashboard. From there, you need to select the Marketing tab.

Then, choose customize.

Under the customize menu, you will also see the Store Page Column Banner. This customization will appear to the left side of your product listings under your resource types. You could use this space to add a quote, important information about the setting where you teach or other ways visitors can connect with you and your classroom online. Within Canva, you can create the perfect size banner by using the custom size feature. Your quote banner should be 160 x 200 pixels.

Last, but maybe the most beneficial use of Canva in your Teachers Pay Teachers Store, is creating product covers and thumbnails that represent each of the resources you have created. 

The product cover is the first impression. This is the purpose of your store!  These designs should provide the customer with a description of the resource as well as provide them with a visual example of what the resource looks like. Canva’s design features can help you to find the right balance of attractive design and information all within a square layout that will appear next to the title of each product you list. 

Thumbnails can be auto generated by the TPT website in order to see what is included in the product. However, you can also create these thumbnails to truly capture the objective, strategies used and materials included for the educators that would like to purchase the resource. Although you can type out a clear description, the famous saying of “a picture is worth a thousand words” may stand true in this case.

Canva is a great tool for helping to personalize your Teachers Pay Teachers store, along with so many other things. I particularly love it for this purpose because it is so easy to create unique and effective graphic design for anything you want. Canva also allows you to design the perfect size image for any purpose.  Lastly, you can resize any project you have made to add flair to your store without having to start from scratch every time. This helps to build uniformity in your store and, ultimately, a brand that represents you and the amazing original resources you provide to students within your classroom. There is nothing more special than that…which is why we want to buy it!

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